It may not be surprising to people, given my role as Arts Editor, that I have a deep appreciation for the craft of tattooing. I love the skill, the details, the original art pieces I get to keep forever and the thrill of new ink. However, it may be less on brand for an academia-aspiring student to coat themselves with tattoos, which is precisely my lifelong goal.
Getting this tattoo, even though one of the smallest, was the hardest to book due to many artists in the community having rules against tattooing necks, hands and faces. I had always told myself I would eventually get hand and neck tattoos, but I am not an “eventually” person. When I get the “new tattoo itch,” I have to scratch it… metaphorically, of course, because you should never scratch a brand-new tattoo.
Graduating TRU student and tattoo artist Avery Stainton responded quickly to my request and told me that she had never tattooed that spot before. Offering me a discount for the practice in her freshly opened tattooing space on Victoria Street, I quickly booked an appointment after telling myself, “What the hell, it’s only permanent.”
Stainton’s space was welcoming and personalized with unique paintings, lino prints, fairy lights and more. Each artist in the space had their tattooing bed accompanied by their own sanitized tattooing station. The space originally belonged to Dani from Soft Stabs Tattoo but is now a space for several artists to continue their practices.
After signing the usual tattoo waiver and proving to Stainton that I’m not a sneaky underage teenager attempting to get some sick ink to show my fellow high schoolers, Stainton and I started polishing up the last edits of the piece.
Stainton brought over their drawing tablet with the design on the screen. She turned it over a few times, compared the design to the shape of my neck and ear, erased and redrew the stars around the swallow a few times, then finally said, “I may need to free-hand the stars.” Given the tiny location behind my ear, the stars would need to be sketched out with a pen rather than with the original stencil. I put my complete trust in Stainton being familiar with their previous work and their mentor. I had no doubts.
Stainton said that working around the ear was the most difficult part of this new tattoo location. Still, it has helped her develop further knowledge on tattooing in uncommon places.
Once the stencil was on in the place we’d found it had settled the best and Stainton completed the arrangement of stars with her temporary purple pen, we had to figure out just how to place me on the tattooing bed to reach my neck and ear space without Stainton elbowing me in the face and still getting the most comfortable position for the both of us to be in for the next two hours.
I sometimes stared out the window, analyzed the shades of red in the exposed brick wall, or chatted with many artists or other clients inside the studio, doing anything and everything to not think of the pain when the needles moved from my neck space into the space behind my ear.
Overall, the pain was extremely tolerable considering what I expected from the location. Behind the ear was the worst spot, but the lower down my neck the tattooing gun went, the less it hurt. This tattoo would be rated middle ground on my personal pain scale, the worst being my seven-hour, 10-inch wide chest piece and my least being the two-hour, three-inch bear piece located on the inside of my forearm.
Being a student in the final year and taking the opportunity to become a tattoo apprentice and a current part-time artist, Stainton opened up about the strains of university mixed with building a career.
“It has been so difficult. It has shaped me. I do think [this] whole experience has been really important to me growing as an artist… but the schedule and work-life balance has been really tough,” said Stainton.
Stainton is set to graduate from TRU after this semester and hopes to obtain more tattoo clients interested in taking on designing some larger custom pieces in the future.
To learn more about Stainton’s work, you can check out her Instagram page here.